Premises liability wrongful death claims arise when dangerous property conditions cause fatal injuries to visitors, customers, tenants, or others lawfully present on another’s property. Property owners and occupiers owe varying duties of care depending on the visitor’s legal status, the type of property involved, and the nature of the hazard. These cases involve slip-and-fall deaths, inadequate security homicides, swimming pool drownings, structural collapses, toxic exposures, and other fatalities resulting from unsafe property conditions that owners knew or should have known required remediation.
Visitor Classification and Duty of Care
Invitees receive the highest protection—business customers, retail shoppers, restaurant patrons, and others entering property for purposes beneficial to the owner. Property owners must inspect for hazards, warn of non-obvious dangers, and remedy unsafe conditions within a reasonable time after discovering or should have discovered them. A grocery store where a customer slips on produce left in an aisle for 30 minutes may be liable if reasonable inspection protocols would have discovered and removed the hazard.
Licensees enter property with the owner’s permission but for their own purposes—social guests, door-to-door salespeople granted entry, or those taking shortcuts across property with tacit permission. Owners must warn licensees of known dangerous conditions but need not inspect for unknown hazards. If a homeowner knows a deck board is rotted and likely to break but fails to warn a party guest who falls through to their death, liability exists despite the social nature of the visit.
Trespassers generally receive minimal protection—owners need not make property safe for uninvited entrants. However, owners cannot set traps or use deadly force against mere trespassers, and some jurisdictions recognize attractive nuisance doctrine imposing duties toward child trespassers drawn to dangerous conditions like swimming pools, abandoned buildings, or construction equipment.
Exceptions and Duty Variations
Discovered trespassers trigger higher duties once the owner knows or should know of their regular presence. Property owners who consistently find homeless individuals sheltering in abandoned buildings or shortcuts frequently used by neighbors may owe duties to warn of or remedy known hazards despite the trespasser status.
Children and attractive nuisance doctrine holds that property owners with dangerous conditions likely to attract children—pools, trampolines, construction sites, abandoned appliances—must take reasonable precautions even against trespassing children who cannot appreciate risks. Fencing pools, locking gates, and securing dangerous equipment become mandatory when child trespassers are foreseeable.
Common Fatal Premises Conditions
Inadequate security deaths occur when foreseeable criminal acts kill visitors on properties where owners failed to provide reasonable protection. Hotels, apartment complexes, parking garages, bars, and retail stores in high-crime areas must implement security measures proportionate to known risks. Previous assaults, robberies, or violent crimes on or near the property create notice requiring enhanced security—lighting, surveillance cameras, security guards, controlled access, or environmental design changes.
Foreseeability determines whether criminal acts were so likely that property owners should have prevented them. A single isolated robbery years earlier may not create notice requiring armed guards, but a pattern of violent crimes in parking areas establishes foreseeable risk requiring intervention. Owners cannot delegate this duty—hiring inadequate security companies or failing to supervise contracted security creates direct owner liability.
Slip-and-fall deaths most commonly affect elderly victims whose falls result in head trauma or complications from fractures. Liability requires proving the owner created the hazard, knew of it, or should have discovered it through reasonable inspection. Transitory foreign substances—spilled liquids, fallen merchandise—require evidence of how long the hazard existed before the fall. Constructive notice requires sufficient time that reasonable inspection would have found the danger.
Swimming pool drownings kill children and intoxicated adults when owners fail to supervise, maintain proper fencing, or ensure pool safety equipment functions. Residential pools require barriers preventing unsupervised child access in most jurisdictions. Hotel and apartment complex pools need depth markers, lifesaving equipment, proper drainage to prevent suction entrapment, and sometimes lifeguards during operational hours.
Structural failures—collapsing balconies, falling ceilings, stairway collapses, or elevator malfunctions—demonstrate owner negligence when failures result from deferred maintenance, code violations, or ignoring known defects. Building code violations creating death hazards establish negligence per se, though owners may argue compliance would not have prevented the specific death.
Toxic exposure deaths from carbon monoxide, natural gas leaks, mold, asbestos, or chemical contamination create liability when owners knew or should have known of dangerous conditions. Landlords must maintain heating systems, gas lines, and ventilation to prevent carbon monoxide accumulation that kills tenants during sleep.
Notice Requirements and Constructive Knowledge
Actual notice exists when owners know dangerous conditions exist—complaints from prior victims, employee reports, or personal observation. Constructive notice arises when conditions existed long enough that reasonable inspection would have discovered them. Proving constructive notice requires evidence of the hazard’s duration through witness testimony, surveillance footage, or circumstantial evidence like deterioration suggesting long-term neglect.
Inspection protocols become critical—owners who implement reasonable inspection schedules and document compliance may defeat constructive notice claims even when hazards exist. Grocery stores that inspect aisles every 15 minutes and document inspections make proving constructive notice difficult for hazards existing less than that interval. However, inspection systems must be actually followed—documented policies ignored in practice provide no defense.
Landlord vs. Tenant Liability
Landlords retain liability for common areas they control—stairways, parking lots, lobbies, hallways—and for latent defects in leased premises existing at lease commencement. Once tenants take possession, landlords generally owe no duty for conditions within the leased space unless they retain control, agree to maintain or repair specific items, or make negligent repairs that create new hazards.
Building code violations may extend landlord liability beyond common law limits. Statutory duties to maintain habitable premises, working smoke detectors, secure locks, and safe structural conditions create obligations regardless of lease terms purporting to shift responsibility to tenants.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can property owners be liable for deaths caused by criminal acts even if they provided some security?
Yes, if the security provided was inadequate given the known risks. Property owners cannot escape liability merely by hiring security guards, installing cameras, or providing minimal lighting if these measures are insufficient to address foreseeable dangers. Courts examine the totality of security measures against the crime history and expert standards for similar properties. A parking garage with a history of assaults that provides only a single untrained guard for a 500-space facility may face liability despite having “some” security. Causation requires proving that adequate security measures would likely have prevented the specific criminal act—positioning guards differently, better lighting in the attack location, or functioning cameras that would have deterred the perpetrator.
If someone dies from a slip-and-fall, how do we prove the property owner had notice of the dangerous condition?
Evidence of notice includes: witness testimony that the hazard existed for substantial time before the fall; surveillance footage showing when the hazard appeared; deterioration or wear patterns indicating long-term existence; prior complaints or incident reports about the same location; violation of the owner’s own inspection policies; or the owner’s actual knowledge from employee reports or personal observation. Constructive notice requires proving sufficient time elapsed that reasonable inspection would have discovered the hazard. Property owners often claim hazards appeared moments before the accident, making time evidence critical. Weather conditions, foot traffic patterns, and the substance’s appearance help establish duration—a dried, tracked-through spill suggests lengthy presence versus a fresh liquid puddle.
Can we sue a landlord if our family member died from carbon monoxide poisoning in a rental property?
Generally yes. Landlords have non-delegable duties to maintain heating systems, ensure proper ventilation, and provide working carbon monoxide detectors in most jurisdictions. These duties exist regardless of lease provisions attempting to shift maintenance responsibility to tenants. Liability requires proving the landlord knew or should have known the heating system was defective, failed to maintain it properly, or neglected to install required CO detectors. Even if the tenant was responsible for replacing detector batteries, landlords typically must ensure detectors are installed and functional at lease commencement. Building code violations regarding CO detectors or heating system maintenance create negligence per se. However, if the tenant modified the heating system, blocked vents, or created the dangerous condition, comparative negligence may reduce or bar recovery depending on jurisdiction and the tenant’s degree of fault.